Advanced Colloids Experiment - Temperature 6

ACE-T6 studies the microscopic behavior of colloids in gels and creams. Consumer products are often required to be ‘structured’ by colloidal gels to prevent instability - or bulk separation of dispersed benefit actives. Benefit actives are generally dispersed as micron-size drops in liquid products to impart a consumer benefit, such as fabric softness. This leads to a fundamental challenge- how do you preventing bulk separation of the actives (i.e. maintain shelf life) while at the same time maintaining the relative ease-of-flow characteristics of the products. The objective of ACE-T6 is to use confocal microscopy to study the 3D behavior of microscopic particles in gels and creams, to advance knowledge of the fundamental physics associated with gel coarsening to improve the shelf-life stability of products. The microgravity environment on ISS was required to detach phase separation from coarsening.